


What Kind Of Loser Doesn't Like The Ocean?

by sergeant_smudge



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Memories, Surfing, Wings, all alone in the mooooooonlight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2014-12-31
Packaged: 2018-03-04 12:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3067844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sergeant_smudge/pseuds/sergeant_smudge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The answer is Aziraphale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Kind Of Loser Doesn't Like The Ocean?

**Author's Note:**

> posted only because it's about 35 degrees too cold for a native Californian at the moment

“You are literally the most ridiculous thing I have ever met in my entire existence.” Crowley called, laughing at the actual sight that he was actually seeing in that actual moment. “And I’ve met the being who invented jellyfish! I sat with the creator of _jellyfish_ for an entire afternoon, and yet, here you are. At the top of my list. And the top of a hill.”

“I don’t understand what you think you are accomplishing with this,” Aziraphale replied, cursing the fear that still managed to tremble its way into the words. He tightened his grip in the spindly plants that clung to the oversized sand dune with the same intensity that he did.

“The jellyfish in that ocean have more spine than you! And they’re _invertebrates,”_ Crowley giggled, positively delighted with the situation.

“I hate you. I actually hate you,” Aziraphale yelled, trying to move his feet and maybe making a bit of a squeaking noise when his sandals slipped in the unstable ground.

“You’re maybe ten steps from the ground. Just go. I’ll catch you.” He held his arms out and planted his feet as though preparing to receive a significant burden.

“You’ll catch me,” Aziraphale repeated, the incredulousness part of the breeze in the same way that firepit smoke was.

“Yes. When you fall.”

 _“If_ I fall,” the angel corrected.

“That’s what I said,” Crowley replied quickly. “I will most certainly catch you. I will catch you like you caught the keys when I tossed them to you earlier.”

“I didn’t catch those,” Aziraphale muttered.

“I know. They hit you in the face. But I will catch you.” Crowley shook his arms encouragingly, a stock-photo grin creasing his face.  Aziraphale sighed, half standing and taking a deep breath. “Good job. Now just… _move,”_ Crowley encouraged, looking irritatingly entertained. Aziraphale made a noise. It really wasn’t _that_ far was it?

“Okay,” he breathed, taking a forward step that was immediately followed by a lot of very fast steps because maybe he was sprinting down a steep hill covered in sand and -

 _“CROWLEEEYYYYYYYYYY!”_ Because maybe also Crowley had turned away, seemingly distracted by something in the opposite direction of Aziraphale and the physics of motion were going to catch up with his feet soon and he’d go tumbling cause Crowley wasn’t looking and _Oh goodness I am going to fa_ \- _oof._ Crowley spun at the _last_ possible second and seized a handful of Aziraphale’s shirt, yanking him backwards with the same force as a very determined herd of elephants.

As space-time bent around Aziraphale to accommodate the sudden change in motion, Crowley stepped behind him, hooking the angel under the arms by his elbows; a violent and shocking trust fall. “Told you I’d catch you,” the demon grinned. The bastard. 

“I - I,” Aziraphale began, trying to push himself out of the supporting arms.

“You are extremely thankful to me for catching you. I understand completely. Hey look, the ocean!” Crowley pushed Aziraphale to standing, pulling him forwards when he stumbled again. “Let’s go surfing!” The demon began jogging, cheering and kicking sand onto people’s beach towels as he went.

“Oh for - _Crowley,_ wait!” Aziraphale yelled, frustrated. He slipped his shoes off, sprinting across the sand to catch up. He skidded to a stop next to Crowley, who was very intensely crouching in the shade of a lifeguard tower. “What are you -?”

 “Look at that surfboard. The one by the stairs.” Crowley kept speaking, pointedly ignoring the violently rageful ‘there are stairs?!’ that issued from his companion. “I would very much like to have that surfboard.” Aziraphale stared at the board in question, a white base blue flames etched along the edges. It looked frightened.

“You can’t be serious.” He glanced at Crowley’s face. Apparently he could. “I’m not letting you steal a surfboard.” Crowley’s eyebrows quirked incredulously.

“First off, I very much doubt that you could _let_ me do anything. Secondly, I’m not going to steal it,” he emphasized, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “Anyway, it’s in the trash.”

And then it was.

“You- you. You-” Aziraphale supplied intelligently. He was losing his touch. Crowley was not this much better than him. Usually. “Do you even know how to surf?” The demon unearthed the now freshly waxed board from the garbage.

“Of course I do! Don’t I? Doesn’t everyone?” Crowley dusted something imaginary off the surface of his new surfboard. “Besides, if I can’t do it alone, I’ll just get the water to do it for me.”

“Isn’t that how you do everything?” Aziraphale mumbled, trudging after Crowley. “Get something else to do it for you?”

“Was that an innuendo?” Crowley asked, and Aziraphale thought that the wiggling of his eyebrows would soon toss his shades several miles east. The angel’s mouth opened several times in rapid succession, each one about to form a comeback worse than the last. “Oh, come _on,_ Zira. What is wrong with you today? I can’t possibly be winning this easily.” Crowley’s head swung back up onto his shoulders.

 “I’m just… flustered.” He flapped his hands around in a very animated definition of the word. The demon’s head clocked backwards again to look at Aziraphale.

“ _Sexually_ flustered?” And there were the eyebrows again.

“Oh, shut it.” Aziraphale sighed. His stomach was bubbling again, a stupidly human reaction. It was just…

“The ocean!”  Crowley cried, throwing one of his arms out in an expansive gesture, standing about a foot from the tide.

“Ah.”

Crowley turned and glared at Aziraphale. “Oh come now, we haven’t been to the beach in _ages.”_ He nudged the angel’s shoulder. “Alright over there?” Aziraphale’s face was paler than usual, and even more so under his bucket hat and suncream smeared face. He was wearing long, plain swim trunks and a similarly dull sun shirt. (“I don’t want to get burned!” he’d yelled when Crowley had burst into laughter at his sunscreen splotched face).

“Yes.” He said it slowly, and Crowley watched his teeth close around the ‘s’.

“So we’re going to move then?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“Now.”

“Yes?”

“Okay.”

“…Yep.”

“Aziraphale.”

“Hm?”

“Are you afraid of the ocean?”

“Erm.”

“You _are!_ Oh, wonderful. This day keeps getting better.”

“Oh no.”

Aziraphale was still staring straight out at the rising and crashing waves, but he was suddenly very conscious of being pulled. By the wrists. Into the water.

“Crowley! No! No, no, no, no, no.” His heels were dragging in the sand, but Crowley kept pulling him, and then his feet were in the surf and – “Why are you doing this?”

“We’re conquering your fear. Right now.” And Aziraphale knew – as he was tossed onto a barely stable surfboard – that even if Crowley had been wearing a lead block on his head, he’d still be able to see that damn mischievous glint in his eyes. He clung to the edges of the board as Crowley climbed on, somehow not capsizing them both.

Aziraphale was perched on the nose of the board, gripping the rails with welded-on fingers. Crowley paddled them out, beaming at the terrified angel with all of his power. The water had gotten almost entirely flat with their arrival, and Aziraphale looked around himself, finding that his surroundings were completely, uncomfortably, and utterly damp. He closed his eyes.

“Hey,” Crowley prompted, leaning forward and jabbing Aziraphale in the ribs. He started, opening his eyes and swallowing.

“What?” Aziraphale snapped, perhaps a bit too sharply. Crowley narrowed his eyes, offended. In one swift motion, he fell to one side, disappearing into the water. Aziraphale moved up onto his knees, still holding to the board with a grip stronger than most bridge supports. “Don’t you dare, Crowley!” he screamed at the surface of the water, his voice cracking. “Crowley!” he yelled again, staring into the water where the demon had dived. His gut was swimming - metaphorically of course – in agitation, great big firey monster butterflies crashing into the walls of his stomach. “Crow _ley_ ,” he carped, leaning a bit further over the edge to look for him.

“ _Ye-e-s?”_ the demon answered. From behind him. Behind. Oh dear.

 

There is a sense of impending doom that has been cultivated over the millennia, almost entirely by Aziraphale. He has mastered the art of feeling each drop of adrenaline as it enters his bloodstream, and he greatly values the experiences, as they are always an insight into the workings of the human body. This does not mean he _enjoys_ it much. Nor is it a graceful event.

When the surfboard tipped underneath him, Aziraphale made a noise that Crowley immediately memorized and vowed to one day own a recording of. Crowley watched him crash as he fell into the glassy surface, treading idly nearby. Maybe today wasn’t a Surfing day. Maybe it was a Whatever This Was day. It wasn’t until the four flailing limbs turned into _six_ that Crowley decided to intervene.

“Crow- _hurghrhblrbrlhrrb –_ HELP ME!” As he was starting to dip under again, Crowley seized him around the waist, lifting his head above water.

“Do you not know how to swim?” His answer came in the form of a mouthful of soggy feathers. Aziraphale was still writhing about, his flapping arms walloping Crowley in the head with every motion. “Calm down, angel,” he yelled, irritated. He was almost struggling to hold up the flapping feather monster and continue treading water, but he pulled the nearby floating surfboard towards them and threw Aziraphale onto it.

“Don’t… ever… do that… again,” Aziraphale panted, pulling himself out of the water like a cat, drawing his limbs together and tucking his wings around his shoulders. The surfboard got longer to accommodate Crowley’s clambering aboard.

“Wouldn’t think of it,” the demon muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. They were silent for a moment, steaming in their own emotions. Aziraphale picked at his wings, rustling his feathers and tossing away dead bits of fluff that had been there since at _least_ the last century. He hoped Crowley wasn’t watching when he flicked away a stray biscuit crumb.

“You’re disgusting.” Ah. So he had been. Crowley’s back was to the soon setting sun, the water casting off shockwaves of pale yellow light. “Why can’t you swim? I am almost certain you could in the past.” Aziraphale was quiet for a second, then he pulled the soaked canvas from his head and tossed it onto the board, a sad squelching noise issuing from the hat.

“It doesn’t… remind you at all of the Floods?” he said quietly, his wings twitching.

“The Floods?” Crowley laughed incredulously. “As in Noah?” Aziraphale’s face was going red, and he looked out at the shore, still smattered with people every bit or so. All of the surfers had gone it seemed - a lack of any movement in the water at all had sent them away. “Not particularly,” he remarked, pointedly ignoring the angel’s blush. “I wasn’t really,” he paused, trying to find the words. “Involved in that.”

“What do you mean? _Everyone on Earth_ was involved in that. That was the _point_ ,” Aziraphale argued, staring down the demon. “Were you not on Earth?”

“Let’s just say,” Crowley said, speaking slowly and picking at one of his nails. “That if I had been otherwise located during the event, most snakes would have a different ancestor.”

_"Crowley!”_

“Wha-a-t?” he laughed, forcing a smile out of the angel. “All snakes are water snakes, my friend, but I was not one of them.” They laughed for a moment, and Aziraphale sighed, looking wistful.

“There was so much water,” he murmured, faraway, and Crowley’s face fell. He scooted forward so his knees were almost at Aziraphale’s.

“I didn’t know you couldn’t swim,” Crowley said quietly, turning Aziraphale’s head towards him. “Or else I would have _almost definitely_ not tried to drown you.” He grinned, and Aziraphale placed a hand on Crowley’s bare chest, spreading his fingers wide like a star. Crowley straightened a few misplaced feathers on Aziraphale’s wing, distantly wondering if anyone on the shore really cared that there were great huge feathered muscles sitting out on surfboard in a spookily calm ocean. The angel was shorter, by only about two inches, but it felt like miles with Crowley leaning over him to touch his wings. He pulled them closer to Crowley, closing his eyes and resting his head under the demon’s chin.

Aziraphale jerked up suddenly, slamming his head into Crowley’s face as one of his own feathers was dusted along his throat. Crowley was holding the fluff in his fingertips, and as Aziraphale looked up, Crowley leaned forward and kissed him straight on, hands resting on Aziraphale’s crossed legs. Their closed eyes were blasted with the pink lemonade sunset as it dipped its toes into the distant ocean, firing off bright hues into the sky.

Crowley pulled away, and Aziraphale almost reached forward again before restricting himself. He opened his eyes to find that familiar mischievous glint staring at him. “What kind of loser doesn’t like the ocean?” Crowley asked, and pressed Aziraphale’s back onto the board, leaning over him to kiss him again.

This time, Aziraphale broke away, placing a thumb to Crowley’s searching lips.

“Yours,” he said, and pulled the demon’s grin back down to his.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> two posts in one day gosh i spoil you folks


End file.
